


Every Thug Needs a Lady

by Kelly123



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Late Night Rambling, One Shot, can these two have a little happiness please?!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kelly123/pseuds/Kelly123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right now you're all that I recognize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Thug Needs a Lady

**Author's Note:**

> So I read the excerpt of Theon's chapter from tWoW laaaaate one night this weekend and plot bunnies started gnawing on my brain. Now granted, I was half asleep at the time, and when I started putting words together together and re-reading what I had stumbled through previously, none of it made sense. But really, isn't that the point of fanfiction? 
> 
> Title is from Alkaline Trio's song of the same. Please listen to the acoustic version for the full effects...it is perfection.

The heavy door slams shut with a boom that makes the flames in their sconces flicker, and at long last they are alone. Wrapping her arms closely around her shivering body, she stares out after the men for several long moments after they leave, brow furrowed at the weight of the information they had communicated. He, however, cannot be allowed such luxuries as to be pensive, and so, groaning, finally surrenders to his grieving bones and allows his weak body to give out beneath him and collapse on the ground.

He is much more at home there now than he would care to dwell on.

He is the first to break the silence, though it is not with happy news. "In the least, Jon Snow will give me a merciful death when it comes, though it will certainly be death all the same." He remarks on an exhale, resting his head back against the cold stone wall behind him and feeling the strained muscles in his neck go slack. "Bastard though he might be, he is Lord Stark's son in that respect, it cannot be denied."

For it would not do well to deny bastards, not now, not again. Snow, Snow, it rhymed with...

But not that again.

His eyes are closed in the near darkness, but they snap open at the sound of her choked sob. It is a sound he is all too familiar with, and yet it does a fine job of bringing him back out of that place inside himself he wishes he could stop retreating to, but yet calls to him like a dog returning to its own vomit. He watches her trembling figure stumble forward in his direction a handful of steps and the terror rises like bile in the back of his throat. Before he can lift his voice to warn her though, her gaze shoots yet again to the closed door at the other end of the empty room and she stills in an instant.

She has learned. Though whether well enough, he is as of yet unsure.

Her dry, cracked lips open several times before she speaks, and when she does her voice is tremulous, as it all too often is. "But-no! You cannot...I could not bear it if..." He tries not to think of how bold the true Stark girl's voice had been in the lifetime long ago in which he had heard it, of how different the two sounds were. Such things did not, could not matter now though, for what he heard was Arya's voice. It had to be.

"I am not afraid to die." He is glad that his voice does not shake as hers does, and that he can pull his head upright to look her in the eye with words which were for once true. "I longed for a quick death before, prayed for it even, and now comes my absolution...though from which gods I cannot say. Snow's hands will be sure upon his sword, it will be quick and for that I must be grateful." 

He did not mention the memory which plaques him still of the time when his own grasp had been nothing of the sort.

She shakes her head, drawing her lower lip in between her teeth as she considers. "But if I...that is, if the Lady Arya were to speak with him, to ask him to spare you…surely he would listen to her-me, to his sister?"

It was a hopeful tone, and he almost could smile that such a thing still existed.

But it wouldn’t be a kind smile. He had never been any good at those, and now he saw little reason to pull split lips back over teeth which were even more splintered. She could still heal from this, he sees in in the way she lifts her eyes to meet his with a hint of something something…but then it is gone before he can name such a thing. He needs not to a say a word to destroy her logic at all, and yet those eyes, those brown, brown eyes, concede to the ground in defeat all the same.

Yes, such a thing as hope had no place here.

"He will never believe me to be her, will he? I look nothing like her, you knew the truth in an instant. Jon Snow is none so stupid as the rest have been."

"Jeyne..." he whispers, the name catching in his throat. It is dangerous to utter such a name aloud, undoubtedly, but now, bound and shackled and yet safer than he could remember being in so very long, he found he feared little what anyone would care for that which a condemned man called a girl who was little more than a whore. That was surely all that was left of them. And yet, it was better now to be those which they were than that which they had been... to be Theon and Jeyne again and not Reek and Lady Bolton.  
He says it again, and wonders with why he had never taken the chance to use it more often when they were both whole and Winterfell was a place they both might have found a way to be happy.

Mayhaps she thinks the same, for she runs to him then, the name she dared not to hear again pressing her into frantic motion. He lets her drop to the ground and entwine herself around him amid his mangled limbs and clanking chains, feels the warmth of her tears and chill of her ruined nose against his filthy skin through the fear for what might burst through the door at any moment. It was still there, of course, as he knew it would always be for whatever days he had left, but for her he was willing to push it away, far, far against the perimeter of his darkness so that he might make a bit of room inside of whatever was left of his soul for the meager light her touch might bring. Hesitantly, he manages the strength to return her embrace with a weak one of his own. He had no practice before at consoling weeping women, and yet with her it was the only touch they had known. He might have wished for a future where her tears might be only those of joy.

But he knew to do so would be to wish in vain.

It was several moments before either one could speak. When he did his voice was softer than before, muffled by the press of her hair against his chin.

"He knew Arya well, they were always closer than the rest. He shares her eyes, he would not have forgotten their color as other men have been like to do so easily before. He will remember...and he may remember you as well. That is no misfortune. We were all children together, and you did him no so such harm as I in those years."

"Do you think he will he give me a merciful death as well?" She asks while sniffling into his threadbare tunic, bringing a hand up to wipe her eyes and leaving it to rest atop his clavicle when she was done. The question was asked with utmost solemnness, and yet if he remembered how such things were done he might have laughed at such a query. He knew better now than to think he could anticipate the actions of another man, but it was verging on the absurd to consider Snow executing a woman.

"He will not kill you. You may not be his sister but you are still an innocent in all of this. He will know that, just as he will know you. He is not a bad man."

He does not say it aloud, but the thought that he had learned too late how to distinguish a bad man from one who was good took root in his words and lodged itself in his mind, berating him with angry insinuations. How long had he tormented Snow for the honor his very life now depended on? How long had Robb waited for him when he had been plotting against the north with his Father? How long would Ramsay have kept him alive if-  
No!

He flinches at the voices inside his head, and yet somehow she stays firm in his arms. Almost as though she can hear his thoughts, she replies, "He is not...but neither are you. He will see that, if you tell him the truth, I am sure."

There it was again, that hope that wouldn't die. And he had no strength to try and fight it.

"Mayhaps you are right, but do not trouble yourself with me. Mind your tongue and be smart about what you say and who you say it to and you will be fine. Snow will not hurt you. Mayhaps he will send you to the silent sisters, even. You would like that, you would be safe there."

"No, no I will not." She burrows in closer to him, and he cannot stop the involuntary tremor which rattles through to his bones when her grasp on him tightened. But even her firmest hold was weak…in comparison.  
“Do not be foolish. You will go-“  
"I do not wish to go anywhere without you. I will never be safe anywhere if you are not there."

And she spoke as though she believed it too.

He began to reach for her hair, to card his hands through the brown locks as he had seen Lady Stark do for her true daughters when their eyes had been red from crying, but even in the dim lighting the sight of his hand, scarred flesh and flayed stumps, stops him cold. He could barely stand to feel the touch of the things against his own skin, and he couldn't imagine subjecting the girl to the same thing.

It was the strangest thing then, when she lifted her hand from his chest and laced her whole fingers through his blunted ones, pressing them both to her cheek. The sigh of contentment she gave squeezed tightly at something within him, and his heart began to thump laboriously within his chest.

"I'll stay with you." She murmured, "you'll keep me safe."

It seemed not to matter that for so long he had failed to do anything of the sort, that she had begged and pleaded for such while he had only sat by and watched her suffer endlessly on, but rather only that in the end he had risked everything for the chance that he might be able to do just that.

She turned her head ever so slightly to press a kiss to the underside of his wrist before breathing in deeply, despite his stench, and nestling her face unto the crook of his neck. He could almost feel the shape of her mouth curling up into a smile against the place where his pulse pounded so heavily, and his heart gave another lurch.

He thought it might feel like hope.


End file.
